Oakland violent crimes No. 3 in country

Jan. 13, 2013

By Katy Grimes

A tiny blurb tucked away on page A4 of the Sunday Sacramento Bee today, told about four bloody murders in Oakland on Friday didn’t do the tragic story justice, nor give the whole picture.

Oakland, CA, the city where now-California Governor Jerry Brown was Mayor for eight years, 1999-2007, is rated the third highest violent crime city in the country. Current Mayor Jean Quan has been uncharacteristically quiet about the increasing violence in the Northern California city, particularly after her prominent role in ginning up the Occupy Oakland protests in 2011.

“A bloody six-hour stretch of shootings Friday left four dead in what police say is the deadly results of ongoing battles between ‘several identified groups.’ The surge in violence led an elected official to call on the city  to declare a state of emergency,” the AP reported.

Oakland police report a “sharp spike” in violent crime, with 131 homicides in 2012 — “the most since 2006 when there were 148,” the AP reported. Only 12 days into the new year, there have already been six murders in Oakland.

How quickly many have forgotten the four police officers gunned down in 2009 in Oakland by a guy out on parole. Oakland’s strict gun control laws did nothing to prevent the parolee from illegally obtaining a banned weapon, and then kill the police.

The media was quick to report that the gunman, already known to be a violent parolee with an “extensive criminal history” and wanted on a no-bail warrant, used an “AK-47 assault rifle,” as if the gun was the reason the cops were gunned down. They largely ignored the fact that the gunman was on parole, and banned from using any and all weapons. Had he pointed a rubber band gun at the cops, they could have arrested him.

Thankfully, the gunman was killed… shot, in fact.

But this violent episode led to the anti-gun crowd to call for more gun control, instead of more violent criminal control.

We have the same situation today, with the recent horrific Newtown, Conn. school shootings. Shortly after the shootings, which left 20 little children, and several teachers, dead, U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, D-California, brought her own gun-control legislation back to life. She proposes controlling who has guns, instead of controlling the mentally ill, well-known gangs and violent criminals which commit the worst of the gun crimes in this country.

It’s not the law-abiding citizens and legal, licensed gun owners gunning people down, or killing cops.

“For restrictive gun laws to gain the public support needed for passage, the public has to be misled, their emotions manipulated, and their fears exploited,” Kurt Hofmann wrote in a 2009 Examiner op ed. “The single greatest obstacle to passage of such laws is an informed public.  The forcible citizen disarmament lobby is well aware of this, of course, and tries to dominate the discussion with its own version of the ‘truth.'”

In one paragraph Hoffman summed up what the gun-control zealots are trying to do.

The proof is that the story of Oakland’s most recent murder-spree, which should have been statewide news, was buried in the Sunday Sacramento newspaper. It should have been on the front page of every California newspaper, and Sunday opinion columns so that citizens could participate in the discussion.

Instead, Feinstein and gun ban lobby, will try to shove her legislation through the House and Senate as fast as possible. And now, Vice President Joe Biden even threateningly intimated that President Barack Obama will sign an Executive Order to ban many guns.

Oakland is hardly the Wild West, but perhaps if more law-abiding citizens had weapons for protection, fewer of their innocent children would be killed.